With intact assets in hand, was able to re-create the core of the game, which can be seen about halfway down into the writeup.
#Retro game challenge ds voice hack iso
The last piece was extracting audio, but sadly the ISO was using seems to have had errors, and not all the audio survived. Stitching the first 16 frames into a 4×4 grid yields a 1024×768 image, and the remaining 64 frames can be put into a 8×8 grid for a fantastic 2048×1376 version. Behold! The results are high-resolution versions of each level’s artwork. used ffmpeg to extract each frame, then wrote a Python script to stitch the tiles together.
#Retro game challenge ds voice hack movie
It turns out that these unusual movie files were 80 frames in length, and each frame was a tile of a larger image. mov files that were less than a second long, and those took a little more work to figure out. bmp files for each level in a modest resolution. Spooky shapes in dark rooms would be revealed to be quite ordinary (and therefore not scary at all) once illuminated with a flashlight, which was directed by the mouse.Įxtracting game assets was partly straightforward, thanks to many of them being laid out in a handy folder structure, with. had fond memories of this game by GTE Entertainment, which had an interesting “flashlight” mechanic to serve the exploration theme. This one's a must for retro gaming enthusiasts.The structure of computer game assets can be a bit of a mystery, even more so the older a game is, and some amount of reverse-engineering can be expected when pulling apart a game like 1995’s Night Light. Even so, the highly creative presentation is top-notch, and the varied gameplay will keep you busy for hours on end. Retro Game Challenge hearkens back to a time when 3D graphics didn't exist and video games were nowhere near as elaborate as the high-end affairs current-gen systems offer. Each issue is packed with tips for the games, actual cheat codes that can be used, and editorial content penned by actual game journalists and editors in the industry. Every so often, little Arino will inform you a new issue of GameFan magazine has arrived, and you can mosey on over to the bookshelf to select an issue and digitally thumb through the pages. Many aspects of the game pay homage to the early years of gaming culture, but the inclusion of fully readable gaming magazines is icing on the cake. While the games themselves appear on the upper screen, the living room scene remains static, and you can watch and listen to Arino's reactions to how well (or poorly) you play each retro game.
The bottom screen shows your character and the young Arino plopped in a living room in front of a gaming console connected to a TV. Another great aspect of the presentation is the way the dual screens are utilized. If you're up for a trip down memory lane along with a completely new experience, Retro Game Challenge should do the trick.
The retro graphics are so convincingly replicated you wouldn't be able to immediately tell the games were made from scratch just for this DS release, without knowing so ahead of time. The highly pixelated sprites and familiar old-school graphics mix with the chiptune audio tracks and blippy sound effects perfectly. Don't expect to be blown away by the graphics the visuals look like they come straight out of the 8-bit past.